


Bury Me Three Feet Deep

by subtropicalStenella



Series: 5 for 500 [4]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Nostalgia, Seriously this is the most miserable thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 19:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella
Summary: 5 for 500 Prompt for Countess of Biscuit: 1) Star Wars Rebels, Season 2 Finale: Rex’s reaction upon Ezra & Kanan returning w/o Ahsoka; Angst, Gen





	Bury Me Three Feet Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [countessofbiscuit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/countessofbiscuit/gifts).



The Ghost crew knew if someone was in the nose gun when there was no adversarial reason to be in the nose gun, they wanted to be left alone. 

Occasionally there's soft voices, footsteps outside the hatch, but for the most part he's left alone to contemplate the fact that this time, he really was  _ alone.  _

 

He runs his bare hands over the helmet in his lap, scratched-in tick marks rough under his callused fingers. They hadn't started to lock up the way some old folks’ joints did, but he doubted that was genetic programming. Just luck. Kaminoans obviously hadn't planned for them to last long, the would-be Empire had known they wouldn't need their Grand Army for more than a few short years, so why worry about altering the effects of age, artificially induced or not? 

 

So many marks, so many more of them since the war ended than during, something he'd never imagined. He didn't keep track of kills, but that didn't mean he didn't keep a death tally. Their names come back to him as he runs his hands over their memory.

_ Denal, Charger, Hardcase, Ringo, Ridge _

_ Echo, _ _ Fives  _

Together, even if they died so far and with so much time apart that their marks should have been on opposite sides of the faceplate, he couldn't separate them in death.

_ Kix, Jesse, Tup, Redeye, Appo _

_ Dogma, Kreel, Mixer, Koho, Oz _

Not all of them were 501st

_ Waxer, Boil _

_ … _

_ Cody _

Not all of them were clones, either.

_ General Kenobi _ , 

The scratch a little crooked because he couldn't believe it, his hands shaking.

 

_ General Skywalker _

Carved deep and thick as he watched the march on the Temple. Dead to him and later just  _ dead.  _

 

He was the last one alive.

Sure, he had Wolffe and Gregor.

 

But Gregor had been cracked even before 66, lost his memory the first time and never got it entirely back. Lost everything all over again with the shock of betrayal and buried it all in manic cheer and a vacant smile.

And Wolffe was a broken man. Paranoid and desperate to keep their little crew safe by any and all means, no matter the cost. Shattered by the loss of his men not once but twice, the Jedi who had kept him sane the first time shot out of the sky by men who could have been his sons. 

 

Last man standing, of the Grand fucking Army of the fucking Republic. Of the 332nd. Of the 501st. Of Torrent Company.

 

He'd lost Ahsoka once, when she walked away from the Order that betrayed and abandoned her, and he didn't follow.

He'd found her in the blood and fire of Mandalore's failed reclamation and lost her in the death throes of the Republic, the rise of the Empire, and he couldn't follow.

Found her again in the heart-- _ as  _ the heart--of the Rebellion, in the belly of the Ghost, tall and strong, conviction as pure as ever now reflected in the shining white of her sabers. 

And now… 

 

Lost again. Bridger, Jarrus… they hadn't known who she faced, who had been under the terrible black mask. But she had spoken to him, had said she knew him. Thinking of everything that had happened in the end, after the fall… it wasn't much of a stretch. She had likely known all along.

 

And she hadn't  _ let  _ him follow.

It hurts to breathe.

Left him behind, again. 

The old blaster scar over his heart is acting up again, making his chest hurt.

And now she was gone. Again.

His helmet is wet under his hands.

 

There's a smooth space towards the front. He could put her there, with Fives and Echo, next to Hardcase. Back with her men where she belonged. 

Instead he pulls his helmet, the symbol of everything he was made to be, with the faded markings he'd added to show what he'd become, and the scars of all he's lost, into his chest, curling up around all his memories in the empty gunner’s pod. 

 

He can't do it.

 

If he doesn't mark her down among the ranks of the loved and lost forever…

 

Maybe he will find her again.


End file.
